


SpecterBound

by scarfConnoisseur, SpadeCalibration (Raxtilt)



Series: SpecterBound [1]
Category: Danny Phantom, Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Sadstuck, crossover/AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-09
Updated: 2013-07-09
Packaged: 2017-12-18 06:02:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/876455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarfConnoisseur/pseuds/scarfConnoisseur, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raxtilt/pseuds/SpadeCalibration
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A humanstuck crossover/AU in which Karkat is a half-ghost named Limeblood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Christmas Trees and Mutations

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you are a true freak of nature. No, it isn’t you beating up on yourself this time. You really just take it as fact now. Your social status was already about as nonexistent as they come before you had to start keeping this mutation a secret. But that’s life, you suppose. And, well. Afterlife.  
Being half ghost has obvious problems, but it also has its perks. Flying is fun as all hell, and it makes it ten times faster to go anywhere. As long as no one is looking. You think, maybe, if you had parents who weren’t completely insane, you might be able to explain. As you think this, a crash comes from downstairs, and you’re shaken from your bed.  
"I GOT IT!" comes a shout. “I KNOW I GOT IT THIS TIME! JADE, COME LOOK!"  
Nursing the bump on your head from colliding with the floor, you pull yourself off the floor and wander out of your room, peeking over the railing to see what’s going on down there. There’s your dad, in his ghostbusters shirt, and he’s standing proudly next to some sort of glowing box. You’re not sure you even want to know what’s going on, but you watch anyway, for lack of wanting to move again. When your mom walks over, your dad announces, “I caught it this time, Jade! That ghost kid is in the ghost-in-a-box ghost trap!"  
"Yes!" mom grins. “You’re the best! Let’s get a look at it."  
You lean out a little more over the railing, curious now. You know they couldn’t possibly have caught what they thought, but just what have they found, then?  
Your parents carefully pry open the lid of the box, and that’s when when your sister topples out of it, looking very annoyed with them. Everyone is kind of silent for a few seconds before Dad guiltily asks, “You’re… not a ghost pretending to be Kanaya, are you?"  
Kanaya sighs and says, “No, Dad, I’m just Kanaya pretending to be Kanaya."  
Mom helps her up while you roll your eyes at the scene. It figures. The ghost they’re really after is you. Which was exactly why you can never tell them the truth. You don’t fancy the idea of being dissected or stuffed into their ghost thermos for eternity… Unlike most of the idiots your age, you actually have plans after school, and they don’t involve eternity as a research tool.  
Kanaya makes her way up the stairs, looking exasperated as usual with them. You really do feel for her. She always gets the butt of Dad’s stupid pranks, and now this. “I keep saying you should just move out." you say as she passes you on her way to her room at the end of the hall.  
"You wish." she states.  
It’s true. You really want her room. It’s bigger than yours, has better internet, is farther away from mom and dad’s room, and has its own bathroom. You’re pretty sure that was the master bedroom in the house and mom and dad just took the downstairs room because it was closer to the basement where they do their weird ghost research. That, of course, left Kanaya with the best room in the house, complete with a balcony, and being the youngest, you got last pick.  
You don’t particularly dislike your room. It has a window you can sneak out of, as if you need that anymore with ghost powers. It isn’t particularly small, either. The ceiling is a little low for some reason, but you’re pretty short, so it isn’t much of a problem. The problem is the fact that Kanaya has it so much better. Who died and made her queen of the house anyway, you wonder as she heads into her room. You catch a glimpse of it as she walks in. It’s mostly black, but there are also splashes of bright colors about. The red curtains are always drawn wide open, too, letting in light. It’s like your weird sister can’t decide of she wants to be a vampire or a… Your mind gets stuck trying to figure out what the heck likes light and color that much. You shrug it off as she closes her door and cuts off your view. Whatever she is, you probably don’t want to know any more about it than you already do.  
You go back to your room and glance at your bed. You’d been resting before that whole incident, trying to recover from the latest ghost fight. Flying is fun. Falling is painful.  
In any case, you think you should quit being so lazy and check what Sollux is up to, so you sit down at your computer and open Trollian. Ten messages from Sollux. You skim it all and find out he’s over at Terezi’s place. You groan.  
Just the name Terezi still gives you goose bumps. She’s always been a little on the creepy side, and when she found out your parents built a portal to the dream bubbles, she marched into your house without so much as knocking and told you to show her how it worked. How you show a blind girl something is beyond you. She had you put on this stupid outfit and try to make it work. Surprise, it worked. And it turned you into a half ghost in the process. Ever since, you can’t just ignore her like you used to. She knows your worst secret, so she’s now something comparable to a beast that needs to be kept happy lest you suffer the consequences. She may not have ever threatened to tell anyone, but you just don’t take chances with people like Terezi Pyrope.  
You decide to see if you can get out of joining them today. If you take too long to reply, you know they’ll assume you’ve been ignoring them and head straight to your place. You type back to Sollux:  
CG: You still online?  
You get your reply almost instantly.  
TA: Yeah.  
TA: Where are you?  
CG: Where else?  
TA: I messaged you hours ago  
CG: I’ve been in bed trying to forget I got so completely fucking beaten last night  
CG: I have this one bruise I started staring at  
CG: It looks kind of like a christmas tree. It’s green like one, too  
CG: I don’t know if I can come over  
CG: I have to try and figure out the gigantic important fucking message my bruises are trying to give me.  
TA: That’s possibly the stupidest excuse you’ve ever come up with. Have you been fucking practicing?  
CG: Listening to you makes it happen pretty easy  
TA: You sure that isn’t just your own thick brain  
CG: I think you’re full of shit and should shut up  
TA: Oh man  
TA: KK  
TA: Get your ass over here  
TA: So I can kick it  
TA: Your burns  
TA: They hurt  
TA: And I need to get you back before I die from the pain  
CG: Seriously, can I skip out this time? Her laugh will make my headache come back tenfold.  
TA: Sorry, man. As much as I’d love to repeat your excuse to her  
TA: We have some serious shit to go over  
CG: No  
TA: I’m serious KK  
CG: No fuck I am not dealing with this  
CG: One day without ghosts  
CG: That’s all I’m asking  
CG: Why should that be so goddamn impossible?!  
TA: Because Limeblood is the only one with the balls to get rid of them  
TA: Now get your ass over here  
Trollian: TwinArmageddons has logged off  
CG: Oh goddammit

You sink down in your computer chair, wondering if you can stop existing if you try hard enough.  
If it’s a power that ghosts have, it isn’t one you’ve figured out how to use. You grab your desk and pull yourself our of your chair, making a point to make it seem as difficult as possible, even though you’re the only one around. You change out of your PJs and grab your green binder. It has all the information about all the ghosts you’ve faced so far. You put it together yourself, in an effort to make this whole thing just a little easier on you. You’re not sure it’s helping, but you keep doing it anyway. You flip through it quickly, trying to figure out any pattern to their attacks at all, but you still have nothing. You stuff it on your book bag, which you sling over one shoulder before you head downstairs. It would be easier to just use your mutation and phase through the walls and fly over to Terezi’s, but people would question when and how you left the house, and the last thing you need is family trying to figure you out.  
"Hey there, Karkat," mom says as you walk to the door, “Where are you going?"  
"To a friend’s house." you reply.  
"With your backpack?" she frowns.  
"We have homework to do together." you explain. She’s still giving you a look, though. It’s a little out of your character to not do your homework the moment you get home, though you really have been a little lazy with it lately. Coming home late after fighting ghosts and then taking a nap, you often find yourself doing your homework late at night. It isn’t ideal, but you’re sure to get it done. Your friends say that if they didn’t know you better, they’d think you were the type to just fail all your classes without a care. You aren’t sure, but you think that’s an insult. You have places to go and goals to reach. You don’t have time to waste by being lousy in school. So you really have done your homework already, but Mom doesn’t need to know that. She finally just sighs. “Okay, okay. Do you have your cell phone on you?"  
"I have the one you didn’t modify." you answer honestly.  
"I did that so you can protect yourself!" she demands.  
"It shot a tranquillizer dart at Sollux!"  
"It thought he was a threat." she states, crossing her arms. “You really shouldn’t leave the house without something to protect yourself. There are ghosts around!"  
"I think I can take care of myself."  
"Karkat…"  
"I’ll be okay, Mom! I haven’t gotten eaten by ghosts in the whole fourteen years I’ve been alive. I don’t see why it would happen now. And if things get really bad, I promise I’ll sacrifice Terezi and run for my life."  
She isn’t at all happy with that answer, but she doesn’t seem to have a response. You turn for the door again, but when you’re halfway out-  
"Karkat."  
You resist letting out a groan and turn around again. “What?"  
"I love you." she says, in that really sincere way she has, and you suddenly feel bad. You’re not even sure about what. “I love you too, Mom. I’ll be back for dinner." you promise and leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers- you're late to dinner
> 
> I shouldn't have to say this, but I will anyway. I'm ignoring the ectobiological relationship between John and Jade. They have NO relation other than being human married. This really isn't because I ship them as much as they just work well in these roles.
> 
> Please please please let me know what you think! I know this might sound like a really stupid idea for a story, but I want to stick with it!


	2. Many Meaningful Metaphors for a Mutant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We find a little background on Limeblood and get in some training before our first battle of the story!

The sky outside is still blue, but there's a slight chill in the air. Fall is beginning to take its grip on Amity Park, and though you wish you could hold onto summer's warm and monotonous days, school has already started, and you're still as determined as ever to get on with it. You make your way into the alleyway behind your house and change into your mutation- Limeblood. You've never been thrilled with the name, but not a minute after you woke up after that freak accident with the dream bubble portal, you managed to cut yourself on some broken glass. Instead of blood, a strange green substance dripped from your hand. It took only one comment on it from Sollux for Terezi to decide your new nickname. Limeblood. Sollux, for some reason, gets along with Terezi far better than you ever want to, and he accepted the nickname as the title of your mutation. There are times you just know better than to argue with those two.  
You take off into the air, making sure to stay invisible so that nobody starts asking about the boy in the sky over Amity Park. That would be trouble. From up here, you can see the dark clouds moving toward your town. Usually, you like clouds. They give you cover when you want to just fly around and think. These clouds look far less friendly, though. Hoping to get this little meeting over with before you end up getting rained on, you head straight to Terezi's house.  
The house looks amazing from the outside, and that isn't to say it's anything less on the inside, but you've never been inside. Terezi ignores her huge house that probably has at least three rooms as nice as Kanaya's, and where does she hold your meetings instead? In her tree house out back. It's a really nice tree house, complete with beanbags and a mini-fridge, but it's still a tree house. You often wonder how she even manages to climb into it, but you don't ask. She'd just pretend to be offended by your question about her 'disability' and somehow manage to change the subject. You've given up on ever getting straight answers out of that girl.  
"Alright, so I'm here." you say as you change back into your human self. "What's up?"  
Sollux and Terezi are sitting in their respective beanbags. Terezi once claimed she didn't want anyone fighting over beanbags, so she made sure to color-code them. Once again, you don't ask how she does these things. Hers is teal, Sollux's is yellow, and yours is red. She wanted the red one, but she gave you first pick, since you're apparently 'the brave leader'. You don't have much of a problem with that, though. You know you're a natural-born leader, and it really is about time somebody realized as much. There's a low circular table that sits in the middle of the tree house, and the bean bags are always arranged around it. Terezi tends to have a couple half-empty cans of Mountain Dew Code Red sitting there, and the beanbags are set up so that theirs are just a bit closer to each other than to yours. You suspect this is once again about you being the leader. And you're still very okay with that.  
You plop yourself down in your red beanbag and set your backpack on your lap, reaching in to grab your binder.  
"Did you get down the information on that ghost from last night yet?" Sollux asks.  
"Oh, my bruises are fine, thanks for asking. That huge bump on my head from colliding with a wall? Not giving me a splitting headache whatsoever. And as you can tell from my glorious and groomed fucking visage, I got loads of sleep, too." you rant a bit. Complaining only worsens your headache, to be topped off by Terezi's terrible laugh.  
"Well it wouldn't happen if you were a better fighter!" She decides.  
"You try fighting these things!" you glare, as if she can see it.  
"But that would be taking the heroic job away from our brave leader!" she pouts.  
"So you didn't get to it." Sollux assumes.  
You slap the binder on the table and slide it over to him. "It's all there. Everything I could remember, anyway. It was late."  
Sollux flips through the pages you added last night and says, "When did you find the time to do this?"  
"While I was waiting for the painkillers to kick in." you answer.  
"Quit being so pathetic and you won't need them." he says absentmindedly while looking through everything.  
"Is this meeting just going to be the two of you bitching about how my superhuman powers aren't quite as good as you'd like them to be?" you finally demand.  
"Actually..." Terezi grins. You really don't like the sound of that.  
"I'm going to be serious, Karkat." Sollux begins.  
"Mark the day on the calendar." you mumble, but you're ignored.  
"The first couple ghosts you fought, you got lucky, but the same old tricks aren't working anymore."  
"He's right." Terezi agrees. "You took a pretty bad loss last night."  
"And we can't afford that right now." says Sollux. "That's why you need to start some personal training."  
"Right...." you nod sarcastically. "I just need to head to the gym and ask, 'hey, what's the best work-out program for a ghost-fighting ghost?' That will go over like fucking pie."  
"No, I'm going to start working on a ghost-fighting simulation for you, but until then, you'll practice on the football field when no one's around."  
"And where am I going to find the time for that!?"  
"With the time you save by not being beaten as badly." Terezi answers, as if it's the simplest thing in the world.  
Remember the times when you just can't argue? This is one of them. So you agree to their training plan, and they begin to work out a schedule to get around school events that would bring people to the field. Sollux argues for a few minutes that maybe you can do some exercises as a human on the end of the field while the cheerleaders are practicing, but that idea gets turned down. You're secretly just a tiny bit upset it does.  
Finally, everything is set up, and you say, "I guess that means we're done here?"  
"Yep." Terezi smiles. "Off to the football field!"  
"Wait, what?" you wonder. "I thought, I mean, it's going to rain soon!"  
"Real warriors will train in any weather!" Terezi grins.  
"She's got a point." Sollux agrees.  
And so, you soon find yourself on the football field, your two friends barking orders at you from the stands and you sweating green bullets trying to follow them. When you complain that you can't do two things at once, Sollux orders you to make two of yourself, and Terezi asks if that's a thing that's possible. Sollux just shrugs, and you thank him for nothing but try to pull it off anyway. You instead end up shooting a laser out of your foot, and you all agree that's a fairly cool thing anyway.  
A couple hours of practice, and you're pretty tired. You feel good about working on your powers, and it still hasn't rained, though the dark clouds have covered the sky. You're all in agreement that heading home is a fairly good idea, but just as you're about to change back into normal Karkat, Terezi freezes, stiff as if she's just realized there's a spider crawling up her back.  
"What's wrong...?" you wonder.   
"He's coming back." she says.  
"Who...?"  
"The ghost from last night, you idiot! He's close!" she yells at you, seeming almost panicked.  
Terezi has always had something like a sixth sense, though you and Sollux call it her fifth. She knows when ghosts are near, and she can often tell you what they're up to from about a block away and just how strong they are at a glance. You make a habit not to trust most things she says, but she doesn't lie about her ghost sense. You guess it gets into her head or something, because Terezi Pyrope is never afraid of anything, except when there's a ghost around.  
"Shit, can we get out of here in time?" you wonder. It's late, and you have no chance against this guy.  
"Doubting it." Sollux says, pointing to a purple speck against the dark grey clouds, moving fast. From that vantage point, he's already spotted you, and you know its you he's after. You'll have to fight, and it's not going to be pretty. You suddenly don't feel so good about all that work you've been doing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhangers, yaaaaay. Actually, I didn't want to make it a cliffhanger, but it was getting a little long for me, so I decided I'd split it into two parts. Enjoy~
> 
> As always, please comment! The more I hear from you guys, the harder I always want to work on the next chapter. *bribe, bribe, bribe* Do you want cookies?
> 
> See fanart, behind-the-scenes info, and get story parts faster by following my Tumblr blog- SpecterBound.tumblr.com  
> By which I just mean, y'know, me blogging about this story.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! Leave me some comments. Do you like it? Do you hate it? Should I throw this whole story in a deep dark pit and be ashamed forever that it ever existed? Come on. I really need something work with. Make this story better. Because you guys that read this are way more important than me!!!


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